Four held for making hoax calls in Visakhapatnam

Visakhapatnam: Pandiri Vishnu Murthy, Gandhavarapu Tarun Kumar, Pilla Jaya Krishna and Maradana Jagadeesh have been arrested for making hoax calls to MPs and MLAs in the name of Chief Minster and former Chief Minister.

They were taken into custody for making prank calls in the name of PA to CM and former CM and made voice calls to MLAs K K Raju, Velagapudi Ramakrishna Babu, Vasupalli Ganesh Kumar, among several others.

"However, their attempts failed because the MLAs, MPs and former MLAs cross verified with the original person and found it a fake number," said City Police Commissioner Mahesh Chandra Laddha at a press conference held here on Wednesday.

On June 6, the accused made a call to K Nageswar Reddy, PA of Chief Minister Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and Sidiri Appala Raju and asked Rs 15 lakh in the name of Chief Minister and thereafter contacted through WhatsApp calls/messages and sent Rs 100 note with a photo number for identification for money delivery and told them to come to Anna canteen, Marripalem location. The accused collected cash of Rs 15 lakh at the point as planned.

On May 7, former MLA Bandaru Satyanarayana received a call in the name of P S Srinivas, PS of former Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and informed that his person will send some messages through WhatsApp. After a while, he received a message from a foreign number stating that Chief Minister told to send Rs 10 lakh and that he would call him in the night. As instructed, the amount was sent through Satyanarayana's driver Sanyasi Naidu and handed over to an unknown person at Steel Plant area. On verification, the former MLA came to know that he had been cheated and registered an FIR at Cyber Crime Police Station.

Before zeroing on the mobile number of the accused, the police verified 512 IP logs, 75,000 phone numbers, 8,732 tower IDs as part of the investigation.

Cash worth Rs 5.80 lakh, gold ornaments of 28.22 grams and silver ornaments of 19.24 grams and five mobile phones were seized from the accused.